Then-TFC coach John Herdman speaks to the media during a news conference in Toronto on Oct. 17.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Around the start of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, as he was making a professional switch from soccer coach to sports visionary, John Herdman started talking about his “brain room.”
This was alternately known as the “brain gym” and the “brain machine.” Herdman didn’t like to be too specific about his brain work, which was another thing he called it.
One of the exercises involved sensors attached to the skull, a spaceship on a monitor and calming exercises guided by the mind.
Obviously, this has zero to do with playing soccer, but Herdman could convince you otherwise.
The exercise makes you “less impulsive,” he once told The Globe and Mail’s David Ebner. “And that’s massive for soccer. Because a lot of mistakes are impulsive.”
Soccer already had a way of dealing with impulsivity. It’s called practice.
This sort of half-smart, soft-science-y bafflegab was Herdman’s stock in trade. He mystified the art of coaching until people began to believe he had some sort of proprietary system. He didn’t just coach the game. He hawked it.
If he’d tried it in Spain or Brazil, they would’ve laughed him out of the shop. But in Canada, where the outside world often confuses and delights us, people couldn’t get enough. Particularly the players.
A philosophical question – is it a grift if it works? Because it did.
No coach in this country’s history has had such a transformative effect on an entire sport. If soccer ever becomes this Canada’s main athletic preoccupation – and that’s in the process of happening – it will have two eras: before and after John Herdman.
That it ends in ashes seems appropriate. So much creative chaos and unchecked ambition was never going to end in a gold watch.
Herdman took himself out of the game on Friday. He resigned as coach from Toronto FC before he could be fired.
It’s too early for a reconsideration, but when the time comes history will be kind to him. He gave Canada what it wanted, and didn’t make everybody uncomfortable by asking how far he should go to get it. That’s service.
When Herdman arrived to coach the women’s senior national team, Canadian soccer was a shambles. His predecessor fired herself when she was told that moving the entire team to Italy, where she lived, and then finishing dead last at the 2011 Women’s World Cup, had not earned her a promotion.
Herdman was hired a week before his first game. Again, not exactly world-class execution.
At first, he sounded like everyone else who’d ever coached soccer in this country – a soothing foreigner leaning heavily on his accent as a bona fide.
But after his team became Canada’s surprise package at the 2012 Olympics, Herdman came into himself. His public persona became increasingly oracular. You were never quite sure what he was on about, but it sounded inspiring. Before and after big games, he could often work himself to tears.
Ahead of Canada’s debut at a home 2015 Women’s World Cup, the big story was FIFA corruption. Someone asked Herdman about it.
“I’m not interested in FIFA’s image,” Herdman said. “What I’m interested in is this team winning a World Cup, which will change our country.”
This was starting to get messianic.
Herdman won another Olympic bronze in 2016, and took over the men’s team in 2018. By that point, he oversaw all the major Canadian youth teams. His protégé, Bev Priestman, was put in charge of the senior women’s team. No soccer coach anywhere had so much influence over a national program.
Priestman won gold with Canada at the Tokyo Olympics, but Herdman got at least as much credit. Probably more. These were his players, in his system, realizing his vision.
At first, Herdman worked the same magic on the men’s team. He overcame the tallest obstacle faced by coaches past – getting Canada’s best players to show up. Once on hand, they did the rest.
The beginning of the end started directly after the highest high of Herdman’s career – a battling 1-0 loss to Belgium in the first game of the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
The Canadian men’s team had arrived, and Herdman was its leader. He was a young 47. You could see a glittering European future laid out before him.
But right after it ended, cameras caught Herdman urging his team to “eff Croatia” in the next match. Then he said it again. And again. Offered multiple opportunities to walk back the insult, he refused.
The incident made international news. Herdman was in his preferred spot – centre stage – but for the first time, not for a good reason.
Canada was run over by Croatia in the next match. Croatian players thanked Herdman for the boost. He was markedly diminished after that.
Herdman left the national program to coach Toronto FC a few months later. No one does that three years before their country is co-host of a World Cup.
Herdman’s brand of rah-rah’ism didn’t work nearly as well in the professional sporting context. Toronto FC was bad when he got there and didn’t get much better.
So when the drone scandal hit in Paris last summer, Herdman looked a perfect fit for a fall guy’s jacket. He’d got the credit. Why shouldn’t he now take the blame?
In his actions, Herdman showed a professional death wish. At first he said he’d co-operate with any investigation, and then he didn’t. He tip-toed through an explanation about how he’d never spied on anyone … at the Olympics.
The most damning thing was that it just felt like something Herdman would come up with. The sort of person who believes in the brain gym could also convince themselves that drone spying on opponents’ corner-kick placements is smart business.
Herdman was the first to give voice to a preposterous idea – that Canada could be among the world’s best at soccer. Whether or not he was its architect, an equally ridiculous idea took him down.
Right now, he’s a pariah. He’ll never coach in this country again, but his legacy will be secured in short order.
Herdman was the tonic salesman who rolled into town and convinced the rubes who lived there he could cure what ails them. And for a long time, he did.